The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

mergers and acquisitions

If the U.S. wireless market were a John Hughes ’80s movie, Verizon would be Jake from Sixteen Candles — rich, expensive car, gets what he wants; AT&T would be Andrew from The Breakfast Club — dumb but popular, brutish, secretly just wanting to be loved; T-Mobile would be Duckie from Pretty In Pink — pugnacious, a flashy dresser, occasionally adorably profane; while Sprint would be Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — always seemingly on the verge of failure, barely tolerated, has parents with a lot of money. And now those rich parents think that teaming up their awkward son with plucky T-Mobile will help them both take on the bigger, more handsome competitors. [More]

In much the way that fans of celebrities enjoy chatting about how great two stars would be together, financial analysts daydream about multibillion-dollar corporate weddings. The current pro-business, anti-regulation mindset in D.C. is only fueling those romantic merger fantasies, with one high-profile analyst claiming that now is the perfect time for Comcast to gets its acquisition on. [More]

Verizon’s shopping spree in recent years has mostly focused on snapping up the last vestiges of the 1990s with big purchases of AOL and Yahoo. But now, the company’s CEO says, it’s ready to go bigger and more modern… and it’s not entirely picky about who it wants its new partner to be. [More]

What do you get when you combine a flailing health food chain and an e-commerce giant that’s desperate to get into the grocery business? We could have found out, since Amazon was reportedly thinking about buying Whole Foods. [More]

Last year, the Chinese electronics company LeEco announced plans to acquire the popular television brand Vizio for around $2 billion. Today, the two companies said they’re calling the merger off, blaming “regulatory headwinds.” [More]

The rumors were true: Panera Bread has found a new owner. JAB Holdings — the parent company of Krispy Kreme, Caribou Coffee, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, and Keurig Green Mountain — will buy the sandwich chain for $7.5 billion. [More]

When the FCC approved the three-way merger of Charter, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House, it did so under the condition that Charter would have to bring broadband competition to 1 million people in markets where consumers only have one choice. Today, the FCC voted to scrap that requirement, instead asking Charter to build its network elsewhere. [More]

Walgreens and Rite Aid want to merge and become the largest pharmacy chain in the country, and the Federal Trade Commission is the main obstacle in their path. That’s why Walgreens, the much larger partner in this merger, is preparing a new proposal for the regulators, which would include selling off more stores to what’s now a small regional chain. [More]

In recent weeks, President Trump has repeatedly mentioned promised investments and jobs from Sprint and its parent company Softbank. Now the wireless provider is reportedly hoping to eventually turn that goodwill — and the Trump administration’s light-touch approach to regulation — into a mega merger, possibly with T-Mobile, Comcast, or others. [More]

Yelp is trying to change the way users visit restaurants — or the way in which they wait for a table with the $40 million purchase of Nowait, a startup that uses technology to streamline the seating process at restaurants around the country. [More]

In recent years, the FCC played a key part in blocking the mergers of AT&T and T-Mobile, and Comcast and Time Warner Cable, while also using its regulatory leverage to place pro-consumer conditions on the mergers it did approve — like getting Charter to agree to not use data caps for seven years. However, the FCC will apparently give AT&T its wish and not even chime in on the pending merger of AT&T and Time Warner. [More]

AT&T’s plan to buy Time Warner — the parent company of several cable networks, not the cable company that Charter snapped up last year — was greeted with a surprising amount of skepticism right from the start. Even though AT&T is sidestepping a lot of regulatory scrutiny by not seeking FCC approval of the merger, lawmakers have continued to ask why this merger would benefit anyone other than the shareholders of these companies. AT&T’s response: Competition or prices won’t be affected because we’re such a small-time player in the pay-TV business, and Time Warner’s viewership numbers are low. [More]

If you found out after you got engaged that your soon-to-be better half had done something that made you question the impending union, what would you do — Cancel the wedding? Move the reception from the country club to your cousin’s backyard? If you’re Verizon and your betrothed is the data-breached Yahoo, you ask for a $350 million discount. [More]

Once upon a time, there was Kraft, home to blue-boxed mac-and-cheese and several other grocery store favorites. Then there was Kraft Heinz, bringing your ketchup and other condiments together with your cookies and cheese. And now, if Kraft Heinz gets its way, they might be joined by European mega-conglomerate Unilever, tying half your grocery store together under one big corporate umbrella. [More]